Vehicle alarms are commonplace in many modern vehicles such as automobiles. A typical vehicle alarm is able to detect a trigger event and sound an audible alarm in response to the detected trigger event. The alarm is designed to alert an owner of the vehicle to certain dangers such as another person attempting to gain unauthorized access to or vandalize the vehicle.
One of the problems with vehicle alarms is that a vehicle owner is unable to readily determine, when a vehicle alarm is activated, whether the alarm is being produced by the owner's vehicle. Vehicle alarms tend to sound the same (or indistinctly similar) from vehicle to vehicle, causing those in hearing range of the alarm to question whether the alarm is applicable to their vehicle. This is not only wasteful of a vehicle owner's time in needing to respond to alarms that are not applicable to the owner's vehicle, but also reduces the effectiveness of vehicle alarms in general, as vehicle owners are conditioned to expect that the alarm is likely not applicable to their vehicle. Moreover, vehicle owners sometimes use vehicle alarms as a means to locate a vehicle from among many vehicles (e.g., in parking areas), and multiple similar sounding vehicle alarms can defeat such attempts to locate a vehicle.